


Stark's Pond

by linosity



Category: South Park
Genre: 3rd pov, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Catharsis, M/M, heavily vulgar, post s21e10, post-mac kyle, rock throwing, some canon content, sort of???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-18 00:30:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13088652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linosity/pseuds/linosity
Summary: Kyle needed relief, and Stan stumbled upon a possible solution.





	Stark's Pond

“I got your text. What happened?” Stan said, panting as he sat on the old bench beside Kyle, who sat sulking by the pond.

The sun was melting into the horizon, its orange glow trembling in the water. Stan looked forward to watching the sunset every time he went camping with his friends; the quiet seemed to slow the revolution of the earth, giving him the time to pause and dwell on the simpler things.

Today, however, the sunset could fuck off. Kyle had been out of it for an entire week: he didn’t go to the bus stop with them, he didn’t finish his lunch, he didn’t join them after-school. Cartman told Stan to appreciate the peace and quiet now that Kyle was gone, but the raven-haired boy knew that something was up. Today, he was going to snap his best friend out of it. 

The redhead’s eyes were downcast and blank. “Can I… talk to you about something? Multiple things, actually. Is that okay?” 

“Sure.” Stan had his hunches on the way. Kyle probably had something seriously personal bothering him, and it was probably about Ike; his disappearance was the most recent, and Ike was family. He had to care about his family.

Kyle sighed as he slumped into the curve of the bench. “When Ike went missing, I… I didn’t know what to do. I just wanted to stop a show for taking things too far, for making the people out there believe that it’s okay to fart in people’s faces, that it’s comedy gold—but it’s just downright mean, disgusting, unoriginal. I never thought it would end up like this. I know I’m still partly responsible, but when I try to do right thing, it goes horribly wrong almost every time! It’s almost like I wasn’t supposed to make things right. 

“The moment I stand up for what’s important, what’s good for us, you all tell me that I’ve gone too far, that I’m ridiculous, jumping to conclusions! Since when have I ever done that? I’m the smart one! All I wanted was to shut down a show and Canada got nuked before I knew it. So now it’s all my fault, I’m the reason why Canada’s in ruins right now when I don’t even know how it happened! No one did. How is this supposed to be my problem when I didn’t push the button, I didn’t say ‘Okay, let’s nuke Canada’, I didn’t do any of that! Everyone’s blaming it on me just because I’m the only one they can point their finger at. 

“And guess what? It isn’t the first time something like this ever happened. Once I spent days, weeks on this elaborate plan for a crack baby orphanage, to do something good for them so they get the care that they deserved. It was my life, Stan. It was my hopes, my dreams for a more compassionate world. And I thought, maybe the orphanage was a start. Then EA Sports snatched our funds away and we couldn’t build the orphanage because crack baby basketball belongs to those jerks now, and they don’t care about their athletes, they care about the money more than anything else. If Slash weren’t there, the orphanage wouldn’t even exist in the first place! I’m the only one here who actually cares about something bigger, and I have to keep all of this to myself just because no one else does!” 

There wasn’t much Stan could say; his best friend was right. They did so many things in the past, inexplicable things that he somehow got involved in. Nobody really thought about consequences until Kyle brought them up. In Cartman’s words, Kyle “spoils the fun”; he was simply too smart for the rest of them. He was smart enough to think beyond the present and think about his regrets, he was smart enough to warn them about the things they’d rather not deal with.

Besides, the dark-haired boy also knew some things himself: he knew that Kyle is easily bothered, and he knew that his best solution at the moment was to keep as quiet as possible to minimize disruption of the redhead’s ranting. 

Stan watched as Kyle closed his eyes and exhaled, sinking into the bench. “I’m sorry, Stan. It’s just been so long since I talked stuff out like this, I couldn’t just say it properly, no shouting and all. Things have been going terribly for me, I-I just—What do I do?” Wisps of light weaved into Kyle’s choppy curls that peeked out of his ushanka as he buried his face in his hands. His thumbs lightly pushed against the sides of his ushanka and Stan managed to catch a tinge of fiery red in his ears; the same shade he witnessed in the television before. 

He remembered watching an anguished Kyle pace across the Netflix studio, his whistle slipping from his mouth and dangling across his white shirt as he held his phone by his ear. _This is the leader of Millennials Against Canada_ , he remembered the distant yet familiar voice buzzing in the phone, he remembered looking up to see his best friend’s cheeks ablaze on the television screen. Stan was too furious to mind back then; but now that he thought about it, Kyle’s blush was sort of mesmerizing under the studio lights.

“Stan?” 

“Oh, right. Uh,” he started, frantically looking around for something, anything he could make do for an answer. But Stark’s Pond was, after all, only a pond; the raven-haired boy could find nothing but grass and rocks— or maybe that could be it. 

“You can try, um, throwing some of these rocks into the pond, I guess. I’ve seen some people do it when they’re drunk, you know, screaming about their exes and lost jobs and stuff.” He really didn’t think this through.

“I’m not drunk, Stan.”

“No, no, not that. I just thought you could try letting it go. Throw rocks and make yourself tired so you don’t think about it that much, if you know what I mean.” 

“But isn’t it embarrassing? It is the drunkards who do it, anyway.”

“Dude, it’s just us. You can be embarrassing if you want.” 

“If you say so,” Kyle pulled a forced smile, bending down to grab a handful of rocks by the bench. 

The old bench creaked as Kyle stood up and stepped towards the edge of the pond. The stones dangled in his clenched fist, their deformations grinding into his callused palm. Stan’s gaze never left Kyle’s silhouette as the redhead winced, taking one from the pile. 

Kyle held his breath as he raised the rock in the air. In one swift motion, he hurled it forward and the first rock plopped into the pond. The only trace of it was the ripples that surfaced after it sunk, and even then they quickly dissolved into the water, and the pond was still again. 

Perhaps it was the lack of impact that made the redhead grab another rock, heaving as his shoulders rose and fell. Stan couldn’t help but worry about the unremarkable stone, helplessly strangled in his best friend’s grasp and all he would do was to sit back and watch. 

Another rock plunged into the water and more immediately followed its lead. Sometimes Kyle threw two rocks at once, sometimes more; sometimes he grabbed another handful because his supply was running low. Not much was uttered because the rocks did the ranting; they plummeted into the water like a hailstorm, and Kyle played their god as he showered the pond with as many rocks as he could lay his hands on. 

It was ridiculous to watch, and Stan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He did come up with the idea after all, and at this point he couldn’t afford to hurt Kyle’s feelings even further. His best friend may have changed, but he was still the fragile one who needed his support, or at least his silent cooperation.

He could vaguely hear the redhead mumble a muffled “Fuck you” with every fling of his arm. Before he knew it, the mumbles turned into snarls, the snarls turned into shouts, and then Kyle was screeching at the top of his lungs, “Fuck you, fuck you and FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU ALL!” 

And the last rock was flung. The two watched it soar into the dry air, cut through the blinding horizon and dive into the murky water. The sunset simmered along the ripples that dashed across the still pond. 

The daytime noise seemed to fade with the ripples, and Stan could only hear the distant mewls of stray cats and the mere beginnings of a drunk riot. He didn’t hear a single word from Kyle, who still had his back towards him. He couldn’t see his face as the redhead shadowed him from the sun, but he could make out a slight shiver of his best friend’s shoulders. The rock throwing probably didn’t work; why did he even come up with such a lame idea? Kyle must have felt so embarrassed; maybe they should have left it to the drunkards instead, they were the true professionals. 

“Hey, look. It’s going to be okay. If you have any troubles at all, you still have me, right? I’ll be there no matter what; just stop keeping everything to yourself. You know very well that—” A burst of laughter interrupted Stan’s trainwreck of words and he jolted upright, startled. 

Kyle was still a silhouette, this time bending over in laughter, his hands clutching his parka so tight that they threatened to rip it in half. His guffaws echoed into the water; it wasn’t the most beautiful sound Stan had ever heard, but hadn’t heard laughter like that from Kyle for a long time.

It didn’t take long for the redhead to look back. Kyle’s eyes were sparkling under the setting sun, all that good-hearted intelligence he once knew replaced by the hint of childish mischief in the blink of an eye. His cheeks were glowing, either from the ranting or from the laughter, but they seemed to illuminate the still waves of the pond. Hell, it was as if Kyle dissipated into Stark’s Pond right then, basking in the golden streaks of sunset as they glaze across his parka. 

It was the Kyle that Stan thought he would never get to know. 

“I can’t believe it,” Kyle shouted despite his best friend being only a few steps away. “It worked! It actually worked! It’s still there, but… I don’t really care anymore.”

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” The raven-haired boy shouted back. Laughter is indeed contagious, he thought as he felt himself starting to grin.

“Yeah! Yeah it is!” Kyle grabs a rock cowering within a patch of grass. This time he held it out, towards a bewildered Stan. “Now you do it.” 

“… But I don’t need to.”

“It’s weird if I’m the only one who does it!” Kyle pressed the rock into his friend’s palm, beaming. “Come on, let’s be embarrassing together.” 

Taking a sigh, Stan left the bench, catching a rock he threw in the air as he stepped closer to the pond. The weight felt good as it landed in his hand, pinning him down while his mind floated in the air. He was aware of Kyle’s eager, expectant stare with every step he took, and it seemed to be the only thing he was aware of when his shoe took a dip in the freezing water. 

“Fuck!” He screamed as he jerked his foot out, furiously jiggling the water out of his shoes. Kyle was laughing again, toppling onto the bench and struggling to keep his ushanka on as he cackled in sweet comic relief. 

Stan haphazardly tossed the rock into the pond and muttered a quick “Fuck you, pond” before turning back to his best friend, who was literally on the verge as he clung onto the edge of the bench, choking in tears. Saying that it wasn’t funny would be a lie; he would have laughed at it too, if he weren’t the one who got his shoe wet. 

So he grinned and he chuckled and he laughed, and the duo’s ugly laughter resonated throughout the pond, the trees, the sky. Stark’s Pond worked its magic and Stan could feel the time slowing and the horizon widening, wrapping itself around him and Kyle, two best friends who had a world of their own, laughing like it was no one’s business because they could. 

Maybe, just maybe, they could be something more. 

“Thanks, Stan,” Kyle said a while after catching his breath. “It’s nice to have someone who listens for once. You’ve been doing so much for me, I—Stan, you’re a really nice friend to have.” He stood up and stretched a little, ready to head home for dinner. 

“Wait!” Goddammit.

Kyle looked back, turning his attention to his best friend. “Yeah?”

As Stan stuttered through the silence, his mind was a catastrophe of thoughts that he didn’t know if he should express. He saw so much of Kyle that he had never encountered before, and he found them interesting, pretty even. The man himself was standing right there and he didn’t know if he should tell him; after all, it was only for a while, and it was only today. Maybe he liked Kyle because he was different; maybe he didn’t like him for who he usually was. He really didn’t know, it all happened too fast. He should confirm his thoughts, and to do that he needed a bit more time. 

“S-So are you coming with us to the bus stop next time?” was what he mustered eventually. He could feel his cheeks warming, asking such an underwhelming question after making Kyle wait for so long. 

It could have just been him, but Kyle was staring at him for a bit longer than usual. Then he blinked, and he smiled. It wasn’t the triumphant smirk he’d give after he wins a bet with Cartman; it wasn’t the tired stretching of lips he’d give when he tells people that he’s fine. It was a small, genuine smile that didn’t outshine the disappearing sun, but still had a twinkle of its own. And it was absolutely blinding. 

“Why wouldn’t I?”

  

**Author's Note:**

> i apologise for the vague summary but you can probably guess the story plot from the tags
> 
> first fic went ok i suppose, but i might write more of these venue-based fics as part of a collection
> 
> pls comment so i know where im going
> 
> tumblr: paraboline.tumblr.com


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